Find your dream home on TikTok in between trending dance and skit videos
Over the past few years, the video-sharing app TikTok has become a go-to resource for users looking for home-related trends, including viral cleaning products, decor ideas, and renovation inspiration. Thanks to the growing popularity of real estate agents posting video tours of for-sale houses, you can find your next home on TikTok, too.
If you’re in the market for a new home, TikTok can be a surprisingly great resource. Before you start scrolling for your dream home, check out these six tips to use real estate TikTok effectively.
It can be fun to browse through videos of mega-mansions in Beverly Hills or desert bungalows in New Mexico, but that’s not going to help you find available homes in your desired location of rural Pennsylvania. Instead, the key to finding TikTok videos of properties in your area is to follow local real estate agents or brokers.
By following local real estate pros on TikTok, you’ll stay up-to-date on their latest listings and avoid missing updates on their properties for sale. Not sure where to start? Find top real estate agents near you, and then check whether they have an active TikTok account.
While sliding into someone’s DMs is questionable behavior on other social media platforms, it’s perfectly acceptable to direct message a real estate agent on TikTok if you’re interested in one of their properties. If you watch a local agent’s TikTok video of a home for sale and are interested in learning more about it, skip the comment section and DM them instead. A video’s comment section is likely filled with notes from users who are not potential buyers, so it’s easy for your message of genuine interest to get lost in the fray.
So, you sent a message of interest to a real estate agent about one of the properties shown on their TikTok. Now what? Before making plans to visit the property, you should request additional information about the home. Specifically, you can request a link to the home’s listing to take a deeper dive into details about the square footage, number of bedrooms, and asking price.
If a specific aspect about the property caught your attention during the TikTok video, don’t hesitate to request more information or photos about that feature. For example, if the TikTok video showed off the home’s expansive backyard, you could request information about the number of acres or photos from other angles.
One of the benefits of browsing for potential new homes on TikTok is being able to view properties remotely, which is especially helpful for out-of-state buyers. However, it may also mean that you won’t have the open house or home-touring experience where you can inspect every nook and cranny of the home.
To learn more about the home’s condition before entering into the buying process, request the home inspection report from the real estate agent. Many homeowners conduct a home inspection prior to listing to speed up the home sale, and the report will detail any issues with the home. If the current homeowner hasn’t conducted a home inspection, hire a professional home inspector to examine the property before moving forward with the sale.
TikTok videos are typically short and fast-paced, so there isn’t always enough time for real estate professionals to show every room in one video. However, you should be wary of videos that seem to purposefully skip over certain parts of the home. For example, if the TikTok video includes expansive clips of the open-concept living room but minimal shots of the bedrooms and bathrooms, that may signify that those areas need some work.
If you’re interested in a property shown in a TikTok video but want to see additional footage of areas not featured in the video, talk with the agent or broker directly to get photos or video clips before moving forward with the sale process.
In a red-hot housing market, time is of the essence. And when a real estate agent’s TikTok video hits the “for you” page, it’s only a matter of time before the interested buyer offers start pouring in.
With that in mind, you should only reach out to real estate professionals via TikTok if you’re prepared to move on the home sale quickly. For example, if you’re not planning to move to a new home until the following year, it’s likely too early to inquire about a home currently on the market. However, if you’re ready to hire a local moving company and relocate as soon as the sale closes, you’re a prime candidate for a TikTok home sale.
